I remember picking up a few issues of the PP back when I was going up to Rhode Island on a semi-regular basis, but I don’t recall much about it beyond it being a fairly generic alt weekly. Again, I’m sorry for the folks who are losing their jobs; no snark here. But it is hard to see what the PP had to offer that isn’t duplicated elsewhere.

Part of the “clean zone” proposal talks about doing “soft searches” for “forbidden items”. It isn’t clear what that means, though there’s speculation that “forbidden” = “doesn’t have an approved sponsor logo”.

A fair number of people seem to be reading this as part of SXSW’s ongoing struggle to get rid of “unofficial” SXSW events, and I kind of think it is hard to read in any other way.

I’ve felt for a while now that SXSW is too big, and I’ve expected a major disaster of some sort. But the funny thing is: we had our major disaster this year, and none of these proposals (or any other proposal I’ve heard) would have prevented it. As a matter of fact, the only thing I can think of that would have prevented it, is more substantial barriers on the closed-off streets.

Kind of seems like SXSW is becoming all the things the AusChron purports to dislike, doesn’t it?

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, or if it is a well known fact, but former Providence mayor “Buddy” Cianci has his own line of marinara sauce, which is sold around the city. (At the time I was regularly in Rhode Island, he also had his own line of coffee, but I’m not sure if he still does.)

Is it possible they weren’t making money because former Mayor Cianci was kind of out of the public eye during this period? (He got out of prison in 2007, and had some radio and television gigs, but I don’t know what kind of public visibility those brought him. At least one of the shows he hosted was the “weekend public affairs program” Four Leather Chairs Against a Blue BackgroundOn the Record with Buddy Cianci. What kind of ratings do those get?)

This story, for some reason, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. To be fair, though, there’s a related story by the same author that’s a little more interesting. You know that scholarship fund mentioned earlier?

I hate to keep sounding like Buddy Cianci’s defender. But if this is a scam, it seems to be a very penny-ante scam. It sounds like something that started out as a PR opportunity and went a little off the rails.

The paper of record describes agents “carting out boxes and bags labeled ‘evidence.'” This raises some questions, at least for me: did they write “evidence” on the side with a Sharpie? Or do these boxes and bags come pre-labeled as “evidence”? Can you buy “evidence” boxes and bags from your local law enforcement supply store?

(Isn’t it kind of cartoonish when you think about it? Sort of like Scrooge McDuck carrying around a big bag with a “$” on it, only instead you’ve got a neatly attired IRS agent with a bag that says “Evidence”?)

So much for that. Looks like I owe Lawrence $5. See if I buy one of your damn t-shirts now, Gonzaga.

What’s interesting about this is how his release went down. Mayor Moreau originally pled guilty to a charge of taking “illegal gratuities” from a “friend and political supporter” who was given a contract to board up abandoned buildings.

However, a federal appeals court apparently ruled sometime last year that “accepting gratuities” was not a crime. No, really, I’m not making this up:

So Moreau’s people moved to have his conviction thrown out, the prosecution said “Let’s make a deal”…and Moreau got the “accepting gratuities” conviction thrown out, and then pled gulity to a bribery charge.

Yep. You read that right. Why would he do that? Because the sentence on the bribery charge was basically “time served” (see below) so he got to walk away a more-or-less free man, and the prosecution got to chalk up a felony win.

This has a little bit of special significance to me. I used to travel to Rhode Island, and I remember this skyscraper. I’ve even stayed in the Biltmore (which you can see in the corner of the second photo in the slideshow).

It is a nice building. I’m sad to see it vacant. But I bet you Buddy Cianci could get something done with it.

There hasn’t been much in the news the past couple of days, and I’ve been depressed and upset for various reasons that the readers of this blog won’t care about.

I don’t have a lot to say about the DOJ report on “Fast and Furious”. I haven’t had time to go through the report myself, and I’m expecting that a lot of people who are smarter than I am will have smarter things to say than I do, once they’ve had a chance to go through it.

The Astros have crossed the 100 loss barrier, and are still on track for 110 losses. Woot.

Today’s NYT has two articles I found kind of interesting. One is about problems with the United Network for Organ Sharing and kidney allocation:

And the mayor of Central Falls, Rhode Island, resigned yesterday. He’s also agreed to plead guilty on federal charges that “he took illegal gratuities from a friend and political supporter who received lucrative work from the city boarding up abandoned buildings”.

Here at WCD, we believe the secret of the Packers’ success is…cheese. We are firm believers in the awesome power of cheese. No holiday for us is complete without a port wine cheese ball, one of the traditional foods of our people. It fills us with delight that our neighborhood grocer is selling gourmet cheese balls. A favorite quick and dirty appetizer in the circles we move in is: take a block of cream cheese, pour a nice sauce over it (something like this Raspberry Chipolte Sauce although a good Mexican salsa also works well) and serve with crackers. Smoked gouda. Or the aged gouda we used to be able to get at our local cheesemonger, which had a nice nutty taste.

Where were we? Oh, yeah. The Packers. And this week’s TMQ after the jump…

I used to spend a fair amount of time in Rhode Island. (There’s a reason this blog has a “Rhode Island” tag. Actually, two reasons, but Buddy Cianci’s been quiet recently.) I don’t recall ever going through Central Falls; looking on Google Maps, it appears to be to the north of my old stomping grounds, closer to Pawtucket than Providence.

Barry’s book is about the April 18, 1981 game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings, which went for 33 innings, the longest game in baseball history.

We’re not sure if we’re going to purchase this or not. On the one hand, it does push some of our hot buttons (failure, Rhode Island). On the other hand, it sounds like the kind of lyrical baseball horseshit we hate. If any of our readers purchase and read Barry’s book, we’d welcome a review.

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